So I was watching Chuck Todd's segment near the end of MTP, talking about the electoral college map, and thought "hmm...his numbers don't seem right". So I found a cool site where you can play around and make your own map (sounds like I'm spamming for them, but I'm really not--hopefully my microscopic UID entitles me to the benefit of the doubt on that). And I discovered, indeed, that his numbers were in fact screwy; but that's not the point of this diary. (If you're curious about Todd's numbers, ask me in the comments and I'll explain.)
What was fascinating, though, was to go through and find where the "pivot point" would be in a close election; or to put it another way, what states are Obama's firewall to squeak past 270 if this race becomes a real struggle? And to my surprise, they were Iowa and New Hampshire, as if those states don't get enough political attention already! See below the fold for the explanation:
I used NYT's handy dandy interactive map of the 2008 election as my guide. I found that if I gave Romney all the states that McCain carried, plus all those Obama carried by less than the 7.2 points that was his national margin, that got Romney to 266. Giving Obama all the states he carried by double digits brought his total to 253, and left three states unallocated: Colorado (Obama by 8.6), Iowa (Obama by 9.3), and New Hampshire (Obama by 9.5).
Although Colorado was the closest of the three last time, I do believe Chuck Todd when he said it was likely to be solid for Obama this time, thanks to the rapid growth in the Hispanic vote there and Romney's unpopularity with that demographic group (whereas McCain had been seen as a fairly moderate Republican by Latinos, and hailed from a neighbouring state to boot). So I put Colorado in the blue column, figuring it was not likely to flip to Romney before those other two states, and ended up with this map. In this scenario, Romney would need one of the two to win (his neighbouring state New Hampshire would give him exactly 270); if Obama holds both (his "firewall"), he hangs on to the presidency.
If Iowa and New Hampshire really do lie right on the fulcrum of Republican and Democratic presidential politics, maybe they deserve their "first in the nation" status after all. New Hampshire was the only state to flip from red to blue in 2004, and Iowa was one of only two states (New Mexico being the other) to flip from blue to red. All the attention in 2000 was understandably focused on Florida, but thanks in part to the fact that Al Gore won Iowa, had Gore also won New Hampshire he would have had exactly 270 even without Florida.
I would like to note for the record that I'm not predicting the map will look this close in the end. If I had to give my best guess, I think it will probably look more like this, with Ohio being too close to predict except to predict that it will be close--but not needed except as gravy on top of the 285 EVs Obama would already have in the bank. And if Romney really collapses (perhaps while clinging to the toxic lead anchor of the Ryan plan) it could go as well as this for us, with Obama falling just short in Georgia. The scenario described before this paragraph dealt only with the question "if the Electoral College is really close, what states will decide it?" And I do believe it's safe to say that if you just needed to know on Election Night whether Obama had won, and the margin didn't matter, you could be shown only those two states and have your answer. If he wins both, he's got it; if he loses either, he's toast.